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Updated: October 20, 2025
I had read the "Assommoir," and had been much impressed by its pyramid size, strength, height, and decorative grandeur, and also by the immense harmonic development of the idea; and the fugal treatment of the different scenes had seemed to me astonishingly new the washhouse, for example: the fight motive is indicated, then follows the development of side issues, then comes the fight motive explained; it is broken off short, it flutters through a web of progressive detail, the fight motive is again taken up, and now it is worked out in all its fulness; it is worked up to crescendo, another side issue is introduced, and again the theme is given forth.
About three weeks later, at half-past eleven one beautiful day of sunshine, Gervaise and Coupeau, the zinc-worker, were partaking together of plums preserved in brandy at the "Assommoir" kept by old Colombe.
True it is that we still continued to subscribe to his library, true it is that we still continued to go to church, true it is that we turned our faces away when Mdlle. de Maupin or the Assommoir was spoken of; to all appearance we were as good and chaste as even Mudie might wish us; and no doubt he looked back upon his forty years of effort with pride; no doubt he beat his manly breast and said, "I have scorched the evil one out of the villa; the head of the serpent is crushed for evermore;" but lo, suddenly, with all the horror of an earthquake, the slumbrous law courts awoke, and the burning cinders of fornication and the blinding and suffocating smoke of adultery were poured upon and hung over the land.
The assommoir otherwise the drinking-shop is the spider that poisons and ensnares their humble natures.
The picture was revolting, but it was great, because there was truth in the subject and power in the execution. And notwithstanding the tempest of adverse criticism which his later works, and especially his Assommoir, have called forth, he holds a high and recognized place amid the writers of the day.
Father Colombe's Tavern, known as the Assommoir, was on the corners of the Rue des Poissonniers and of the Boulevard de Rochechouart. The sign bore the one single word in long, blue letters: DISTILLATION And this word stretched from one end to the other. On either side of the door stood tall oleanders in small casks, their leaves covered thick with dust.
In each preceding attempt, the author had stopped short at the end of the first act, and, on recommencing, had produced a different version. The hero was a joiner, living in the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, whose habitual drunkenness had procured him his nickname. Had it been developed, the piece would no doubt have been a popular drama, on the lines subsequently followed by Zola's Assommoir.
He had probably returned to the more congenial society at the Assommoir, and someone said he might stay in the street; certainly no one would go after him, but just as they had swallowed the soup Coupeau appeared bearing two pots, one under each arm a balsam and a wallflower. All the guests clapped their hands.
The great feature of the house, however, was the distilling apparatus which stood at the back of the room behind an oak railing on which the tipsy workmen leaned as they stupidly watched the still with its long neck and serpentine tubes descending to subterranean regions a very devil's kitchen. At this early hour the Assommoir was nearly empty.
She had washed a cap and mended an old gown with the hope of being presentable. About nine o'clock, in a towering rage, she sallied forth on an empty stomach to find Coupeau. "Are you looking for your husband?" said Mme Boche. "He is at the Assommoir. Boche has just seen him there." Gervaise muttered her thanks and went with rapid steps to the Assommoir. A fine rain was falling.
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